An Iowa Teenager Was Killed in an Alley, but Was It a Hate Crime?

BURLINGTON, Iowa — At 16 years old, Kedarie Johnson stood out in this quiet city tucked beside the Mississippi River. He was black in a mostly white county in a mostly white state. His family had come from the West Side of Chicago, a city 100 times the population of Burlington. And he sometimes dressed in women’s clothes, favoring maxi skirts, decorated fingernails and hair weaves.

For all the differences, Kedarie was widely accepted: He was a popular junior at the high school, known for his infectious laugh and dazzling grin.

So it was all the more staggering to Burlington residents when Kedarie was found dead in 2016 — shot to death, a plastic bag shoved down his throat and his body doused with bleach — in a tranquil alley behind a row of houses up the hill from the river.

As jurors on Thursday heard opening statements in a murder case against one man and as a second man awaited trial, an essential question loomed: Was the killing of Kedarie, much as he may have been beloved in his own circles, a hate crime?

Kedarie’s case and that lingering question were thrust into the spotlight and inserted into a wider debate over national policies on gender identity when it came to light this month that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a conservative who has rolled back legal protections for transgender people as a group, personally initiated federal involvement.

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Jorge Sanders-Galvez, one of two men accused of killing Mr. Johnson, at the South Lee County Courthouse in Keokuk, Iowa, on Tuesday.CreditJohn Lovretta/The Hawk Eye, via Associated Press

The trial that is underway accuses Jorge Sanders-Galvez, 23, of first-degree murder under Iowa law. But the Justice Department has taken the highly unusual step of sending a lawyer experienced in federal hate crimes to help present the case. Local officials say that even as the state trial goes on, a federal grand jury is being convened to investigate the killing as a possible hate crime.

Mr. Sessions has declared that the Justice Department no longer considers transgender people to be protected from workplace discrimination, and he reversed a policy encouraging schools to let transgender students use bathrooms that fit their gender identities. So when the Justice Department’s involvement in Kedarie’s case became public, civil rights groups responded with skepticism.

Lambda Legal, an organization that advocates on behalf of gay and transgender people, said it was right that the federal authorities help seek justice for the killing of Kedarie, whom Lambda described as “one of the far too many transgender people, and especially transgender people of color, targeted in the ongoing lethal epidemic of hate violence.” But a Lambda official, Sharon McGowan, said Mr. Sessions’s actions in the southeast Iowa case were akin to “handing out gasoline and matches, and then looking for a pat on the back when he prosecutes someone for committing arson.”

But here in Burlington, a manufacturing city of 25,000 known for a really crooked street, Snake Alley, and an annual Steamboat Days festival, Kedarie’s case is deeply personal. His death was one of only three homicides last year, and some residents saw it as a troubling sign of rising violence in a peaceful city. After his body was found, residents packed into Burlington High School’s gymnasium for an emotional viewing and funeral.

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Kedarie was a popular junior at Burlington High School who often wore skirts and makeup to school.

“He was very accepted by everyone,” his mother, Katrina Johnson, said. “That’s why his death really shook this town up.”

Ms. Johnson said she had moved Kedarie and his younger brother from Chicago several years ago to create a better life. At the high school, Kedarie was known to nearly everyone. He was rambunctious, a willing center of attention. He was someone who got into his share of trouble, including getting suspended, friends said, but mainly for antics — like dancing in the halls and skipping class — that made him popular with fellow students.

He shared tips about flat irons and false eyelashes with the girls, and was “the person who helped you with your problems” among the boys, they said. He had worked part-time at Taco Bell and helped teach children to dance at a community group, the Maple Leaf Center. “He befriended anyone who talked to him who wanted to be his friend because he was that cool a person,” Andre Giles, 19, said.

When Kedarie first started wearing skirts and makeup to school, “some people were kind of shocked but after the first couple times it became the normal thing,” Shaunda Campbell, a former counselor at the school, recalled. “He was just a kid people liked so I guess it didn’t matter.”

Ms. Johnson said she viewed her son as gender fluid, rather than transgender, as some others have described him. She said Kedarie preferred the pronoun “he,” though some of his friends said he sometimes went by “she.” He wore clothing designed for men, and other times, for women. And he sometimes went by the name Kandicee, especially with people his own age. His mother said he had dated girls, but preferred to date boys.

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Katrina Johnson before the start of a change of venue hearing last year in the murder trial of Jorge Sanders-Galvez, one of two men accused of killing her son. She viewed her son as gender fluid.CreditJohn Lovretta/The Hawk Eye, via Associated Press

Most of all, those who knew Kedarie said he never seemed to be struggling with issues about his gender identity or his sexual orientation or what other people might think about any of it. “Kedarie was just Kedarie, and that was that,” said Tremell Jones, 17, a friend who was with him the night he disappeared.

Not long before midnight on March 2, 2016, the police received reports of gunshots in an alley behind Walnut Street. They found a body in the tall grass. Kedarie was shot twice in the chest. He had no shoes on, and his shirt was pushed up. A bleach bottle was nearby.

Prosecutors say Mr. Sanders-Galvez and a cousin, Jaron Purham, 26 — both of whom lived most of the time in the St. Louis area — had observed Kedarie only a few hours earlier in Burlington’s Hy-Vee grocery store, where he liked to hang out and use the Wi-Fi. Surveillance video from the store showed him dressed that evening in long hair extensions, a pink headband and leggings. Just before Kedarie vanished, when he left the store and stopped at a friend’s home to borrow bras from her, he mentioned that he was worried about someone following him, the friend has testified.

The prosecutors have not said exactly what they believe took place in the less than two hours before Kedarie was found dead, except to say that the two men liked women and had brought him back to a house where they had been staying and where they often had sex with various women. The prosecutors’ suggestion, though not explicitly made before jurors, was that Mr. Sanders-Galvez and Mr. Purham thought that Kedarie was a woman and grew enraged and violent when they discovered otherwise. Kedarie’s backpack and shoes were found in the house.

Lawyers for Mr. Sanders-Galvez, who has sat silently in a suit and tie in the courtroom in Keokuk, Iowa, south of Burlington, where the trial is taking place, have yet to offer a defense. In an interview, one of the defense lawyers, Curtis Dial, said simply that his client “did not do it. That’s it.”

In charging the men with murder — but not hate crimes — the local authorities concluded that the killing did not amount to a hate crime under Iowa’s statute, which bars committing crimes against people for reasons that include race, religion and sexual orientation. Gender identity is not covered by the state’s statute, and efforts last year to add it died in the Republican-held state House. A first-degree murder conviction, the local authorities noted, carries a serious penalty: life in prison.

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Christopher Perras, a Justice Department lawyer, gave the opening statement for the prosecution on Thursday. Federal hate crime charges are being considered in the death of Kedarie Johnson.CreditPool photo by Zach Boyden-Holmes

Even with the state trial underway, federal authorities can separately pursue the case as a violation of federal hate crime statutes, which do cover crimes motivated by gender identity. Christopher Perras, the Justice Department lawyer assisting on the case, who gave the prosecution’s opening statement on Thursday, declined to be interviewed. Some legal experts said the decision about whether to bring federal hate crime charges was significant because of the message that could convey.

“Look, I think it was a hate crime and it needs to be said as such,” Ms. Campbell, the former counselor, said. “Here was a child — a 16-year-old child — trying to make his way in the world. You cannot convince me that he was not killed because of how he was presenting himself.”

Matt Apuzzo contributed from Washington and Mitch Smith from Chicago.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Murder in an Alley: Was It a Hate Crime?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe